


the itsy bitsy spider

by orphan_account



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Age Play, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon - Comics, Character Study, Gen, M/M, Non-Sexual Age Play, Past Child Abuse, internalized kinkshame
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-17
Updated: 2019-01-17
Packaged: 2019-10-11 18:43:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17452361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Natasha likes to de-stress by being in a Little headspace. It's a secret she guards even more closely than the details of her international assassinations. And then someone finds out...





	the itsy bitsy spider

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Start All Over (in a Little Bitty World)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8147758) by [Dira Sudis (dsudis)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dsudis/pseuds/Dira%20Sudis). 



Just before she stops feeling old enough to feel embarrassed about what she’s doing, Natasha always wonders: why am I doing this? Why do I want this so much? Then again, it’s not like she had a childhood. She has two sets of memories- it’s just that neither offered her the chance to be a child. In one, she was a ballet prodigy trained since she could walk. Long hours until her muscles screamed and her toes bled, sweating in the studio while other children ran and played just outside- but she wasn’t like them, she was the best, and she’d get a ruler to her knuckles if she missed the tempo on a releve. In the other, the Red Room. Learning to throw knives blindfolded, knowing that a girl who’d misbehaved yesterday would bleed if she missed. Fighting over scraps of food to keep from starving, and over scraps of affection from the teachers because they were all starving just as much for kindness.

She knows plenty of people who’ve had normal childhoods do things like this. Normal lives, even. That many of them don’t feel the least bit ashamed.

And yet.

Here is her ritual: a long hot shower, scrubbing the dried blood of her enemies from under her fingernails. Putting her hair in two French braids, which look nicer than pigtails, and changing into kid clothes, an oversized soft T-shirt and butterfly leggings. She takes a few big deep breaths and lets everything get a lot simpler. Her body is for the battlefield, but it’s also for rolling around on the nice soft carpet of her living room, grabbing her toes and wiggling them. Stretching in slow ways that feel good. Even though she was up before dawn, it’s only four in the afternoon. The whole day spreads out before her, and she can play as much as she wants.

Tashenka is seven years old, which is more than enough to look after herself. Her parents are long gone, but they died in the ordinary way, not by anyone making them be dead on purpose. Someday, maybe, she’ll have someone to look after her again. (Natasha has stopped wishing for anything like that, but as Tashenka she can’t bring herself to let go of the thought.) Someone who’s just as comfortable washing blood off her hands as they’d be washing grape jelly off her face.

Seven isn’t quite big enough to use real knives for anything but killing, so she rinses off a nectarine from the fridge and eats it over the sink, letting the juice get her hands sticky and drip onto her shirt. Fresh fruit, in January… she’s lucky, real lucky, even if she doesn’t have anyone to cut it up for her. She makes a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and microwave chicken nuggets, which came from the supermarket just to sit on her plate.

Tashenka vaguely knows that you’re not supposed to eat food right in front of the TV, lying on your tummy and getting crumbs all over the carpet. On the other hand, people who are seven ought to have bigger people looking after them, so it’s perfectly fair in terms of exchange. As the Royal Ballet moves into the final group number of The Tortoise and the Hair, she finishes licking off her fingers and wipes them on her leggings. Should she color the Coppelia paper doll today? No, the Firebird. The Firebird fought King Koschei with her magic feather, and Tashenka has had a very long day of grown-up fighting. There are stitches all up her back, just like the ones holding her teddy bear together. Even though she heals real quick, because the Red Room makes little girls special, they’ll still have to stay in all day; it’s itchy every time she moves. She’s not going to scratch, because seven is old enough to know better, but she wants to.

(A big dino tail went WHACK and knocked me off my motorcycle, and I got right back up, she’d explain to a grownup. If she had one looking after her. And then that grownup would brush her hair until it was nice and shiny and say, Nata, Natulia, you are the bravest little girl there ever was, and give her a kiss on the forehead and give her bear a kiss, too.)

Most kids don’t keep their toys in a safe behind another safe,  but that’s just because most kids aren’t as smart as she is. Her coloring book, and her paper dolls (she printed everything out, wiped her internet history, scrubbed the hard drive) and Bear.

“Agent Bear, this is Tashenka. Any activity from your post?”

Bear hasn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary. He has blue fur and an embroidered nose, and velvety paw pads, and he is probably one of her favorite agents that she’s ever worked with. Or at least the most huggable. She gives him a big squeeze as they sit down to color.

Movement outside the apartment’s door, two rooms away. She’s halfway to Natasha, instantly on her feet, before she remembers that it’s probably the mail delivery.

Probably.

Maybe even her mail delivery, Tashenka’s. But still. You don’t get to be an old spy, even one who is seven and a half years old, unless you’re absolutely careful. In an instant the secret knife is moved from her boot into her sleeve. “Stay down, Agent Bear,” she whispers, shoving him between two couch cushions. As she moves towards the door, she glances back; Agent Bear is right where he was posted, very good at following orders. She crouches, tosses her jacket up at the peephole; no shots. Creaks the door open just a teeny, tiny bit.

There’s no one there, only a package. And the return address?

Tashenka beams, wiggly with excitement. It’s hers. It’s toys.

The last time big girl Natasha was having a very long day, she’d made a purchase on a spare burner phone that was going to get its hard drive wiped anyway. A purchase funneled through three separate courier services and two different junior Shield agents, each of whom had been fed a different lie about what they were delivering. A ballerina doll with a soft cloth body and porcelain limbs, eyes just a little greener than hers, hair a deep auburn only a bit darker than her own true red. Like a best friend, or even a little sister. Someone to hold and take care of and love.

And then she’d gotten to buy doll clothes. Cozy tie-dye jammies, a pretty sparkly dress, a wool coat with a fur trim and real buttons. She’d rationed those purchases out, one for every fight where she’d been caught by shrapnel or the edge of an explosion, the only thing that she’d ever be careless enough to let touch her.

A real doll, and real clothes to dress her up with. She twirls the knife and expertly slices the package open-

Huh. These? These aren’t hers. She takes out each item, growing steadily more confused.

A few plastic dinosaurs, the expensive kind, in clamshell packaging. Three packets of baseball cards. And a bright pink Nerf pistol, the kind that holds one dart in the barrel and another on top.  (That kind is too small for the aim to be anywhere near good; Tashenka doesn’t like playing with her real guns when she’s little, but she’s taken apart and modified a couple Nerf rifles just to have something useful to do with her hands.)

Someone else ordered from the same store. She turns the package over: it’s Bucky and Steve’s floor.

Right. It’s… probably unlikely that either of them are like her. She’s just going to return everything, swap the two packages- maybe they haven’t even seen their mail yet- and pretend it never happened.

Her package is sitting in the hallway outside their apartment, barely disturbed. There are a few indentations in the cardboard, as if it’s been ripped open with a metal hand, but at least they don’t have to have an awkward conversation.

It’s three weeks and as many battles later, when she finally decides to reward herself for being good by taking out the doll and brushing her hair, that she finally spots the crayon-scrawled note tucked carefully into her doll’s hand.

HELLO TASHA

MY NAME IS JAMESY. I AM FIVE YERS OLD SORRY ABOUT OPENING YOR PACKAGE I THOT IT WAS MY DINASAURES.

ANYWAY MY DADDY SAYS I SHOULD MAKE MORE FRIENDS WHO ARENT GRONUPS AND HE ASKS DO YOU WANT TO COME OVER FOR DINNER SOMETIME. I DONT MIND THAT YOU ARE A GIRL I PROMISS. WE CAN PLAY YOUR BALLERINA DOLLY AND MY GI JOES.

SINCEERLY JAMESY.

She grabs a burner phone, one of the many scattered around her apartment; different contacts from her Widow’s Web have different numbers, and she checks them all daily. Bucky only has one phone. Stark Industries. Easy to memorize the number when Steve thought she wasn’t looking.

She texts: hey. You free 1600 hours?

A quick reply: sure of course always, old friend.

He adds: sorry about the … mix up. As well as the letter, if I guessed wrong. Didn’t mean to overstep/make you uncomfortable.

She chews on her lower lip and runs her hand through her hair before composing a reply: actually I wanted to thank you for the invitation. guess we have more in common than we thought. And, in a burst of bravery:

it’s Tashenka actually

Tasha was close

but you know how Russian nicknames are amirite

He types out the smiley face, colon and parenthesis, instead of using the emoji- Steve does the same- and adds: Great, we’ll see you soon.

Back when the man with the metal arm lacked a name and she hadn’t earned one yet, they’d looked out for each other, fought together as easily as they synchronized their watches or their breathing. It was the deepest and most dreamless she’d ever slept: tracking a political prisoner across the Siberian wastes, knowing that the Soldier was keeping watch at the mouth of their tent, or that the man posing as her socialite alter ego’s bodyguard really would kill to keep her safe.  

Since joining the Avengers, Natasha has learned how to trust her allies with her life. But Tashenka is learning that she can trust people with her secrets, too. She hugs her doll close to her chest, and her face hurts from smiling.

 

**Author's Note:**

> anyway Bucky is a relatively normal traumatized child in a little headspace but even when Natasha is a child she's still a child soldier and that's going to Throw Steve For A Loop!!!
> 
> jamesy nickname borrowed from dsudis, whose stucky ageplay fic is Heccin Adorbs


End file.
